Eleven years of impunity. Since 1993 the bodies of hundreds of women who were brutally murdered in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico have been found. -These are the abrasive horrors committed against women in Mexico. - The overwh... more &raquoelming pain of mothers and families. Most of the victims are women between the ages of 12 and 25 years old. Almost all of them migrated from their hometowns, looking for a brighter tomorrow... Eighteen women disappear each month... women nobody will ever see again. Erika is a young journalist for the cultural column in a city newspaper. She is up for a promotion that will take her to New York City. Erika lives with her nanny, Alma. Rosa Maria, Alma s only daughter, moves to Ciudad Juarez searching for a better way of life. Nevertheless, not even in her most chilling nightmare did Rosa Maria foresee what destiny had prepared for her. After the mysterious disappearance of Rosa Maria, Alma decides to look for her. Still expecting an answer from New York, Erika goes along to Ciudad Juarez without imagining the horror she is about to confront. Four murder cases of hundreds of women pass before her eyes. Little by little, Erika and her boyfriend David, begin to realize the magnitude of the problem; the chilling crimes and women disappearances are by the hundreds. Finally, Erika receives the call expected from New York, but she cannot bear the idea of walking out on the families she has met, the women who suffer because of the emptiness of losing their loved ones; for whom justice is nowhere nearby. Erika and David start receiving anonymous threats. Nonetheless, having repeatedly comforted indifference and impunity, they decide to take a titanic and desperate battle to unmask the killers. Ciudad Juarez, Infinite as the Dessert, narrates the existing theories behind the brutal homicides of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez. It is a cry of indignation and reproach, emerging from the victims graves. It is a story based in true events that will chill y&laquo less

Movie Reviews

A WRENCHING AND SERIAL PRESENTATION OF A VIOLENT REALITY OF

C. Scanlon | among us humans | 05/21/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I purchased this DVD for a friend from Juarez, and viewed some portion of its long series. Indeed, it plays like a television mini-series with several episodes presenting the horrifying fates of several young women, with a unifying theme of a peace-and-justice committee fighting for some action on behalf of the victimized women of Juarez. Not only does this series reveal the violent death of women who are kidnapped, tortured, violated and horribly murdered, but also the severe economic situation in which they are trapped, including working for slave wages in the international sweatshops called maquilas, where they are not only subject to extremely poor salaries with few benefits, but also prey to managers and overseers, released at all hours of the night onto the street to find some way home in a dangerous city.

This series also reveals the inability of the law enforcement organizations to do anything for these several victims of femicide, either through official incapacity or lack of interest and denial, or blaming the victims. On Good Friday 2008 while walking with the Via Crucis commemoration through the streets of Juarez, I asked journalists walking with us whether the situation of femicide continues. They laughed that now they suffer policiacide, as, for example, the heads of police are being slaughtered on the way to the mall off duty.

This movie, while avoiding slasher elements, is really too intense for viewing. Towards the end, one of the peace and justice organization's workers mentions how these torture and murders are sometimes done for the lucrative snuff movie market. In some ways this series in itself resembles a snuff movie, yet without the extremes of bloody scenes some commonly watch in our US horror films. Instead we have such truly heartwrenching scenes as the kidnap victim of one episode in a tight close up of her face, sobbing silently while her sated victimizers talk softly, idly and casually off camera prior to dumping her body in a bonfire, and none will come to help her. The sound of their casual voices in the background ignoring absolutely her suffering is the most horrible thing ever filmed, and the most telling of the ultimate banality of evil. They do not care; they are not enraged nor insane. They simply chat quietly about other things, and then we see them dumping her body.

This is the most gripping and real presentation of violence. It does not care; it has no interest, in its casual victims. Thus we have uncounted "collateral damage" among Iraqis (Lancet places it at perhaps a million, but we must count from the time when Papa Bush began his long war of siege and blockade, leaving hospitals without resources and children without food). Thus we have legalized torture no longer called torture. Thus we have torture of illegally held prisoners called "frat pranks." Thus we have a failure to recognize the banality of our own evil, but its official elevation to the status of a crusade against evil.

Some theorists place the femicide in Juarez as frat pranks by rich boys from El Paso. This film is important for us to view to confront the cycle of violence in our society and in our world, and to engage our feet upon the path to peace, and justice. Please read as well from the viewpoint of the victims the several excellent and scholarly theological works by the Reverend Father Jon Sobrino, including Terremoto, terrorismo, barbarie y utopia / Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity and Hope: El Salvador, Nueva York Afganistan/ El Salvador, New York, Afghanistan and The Principle of Mercy: Taking the Crucified People from the Cross."